


Oh god its wonderful

by reginalds



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Because I don't really care!, M/M, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:42:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23804809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reginalds/pseuds/reginalds
Summary: “It’s nice, isn’t it Buck?” Steve says at one point, one cheek distended with a huge bite of food. “A little apartment all our own in Brooklyn. Nice neighbors, good food.”“Air conditioning. Coffee,” Bucky adds, and Steve smiles at him.“August in New York,” he says, “I got the city and I got air conditioning and I got you. Ain’t nothin’ else I’ll ever need.” He lets his legs fall outward, pressing against Bucky’s shins. “You ever think about how lucky we got?”“Every god damn day,” Bucky says, “chew your food, Rogers, before you choke.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 76
Collections: Safe Home 2020





	Oh god its wonderful

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I’m working on a bunch of multi-fandom one-shots where all my favorite ships are healthy, in love, and staying indoors. I hope you’re all safe and well, and that these little slips of stories bring you some comfort in an uncertain time. Kicking it off with my favorite Brooklyn boys and sending you all the love. 
> 
> Title is from Frank O'Hara's poem 'Steps.'

_oh god it’s wonderful  
_ _to get out of bed  
_ _and drink too much coffee_  
_and smoke too many cigarettes  
_ _and love you so much_

Frank O’Hara

Steve stirs awake mere moments before Bucky skids back into the apartment, two steaming cups of coffee in hand. He’s standing in the doorway to their bedroom, sleep-mussed, in his boxers and a white t-shirt, and he quirks a bemused eyebrow at Bucky’s rapid entrance – through the window, from the fire escape, because it’s faster than walking up the stairs.

“God damn it, Stevie,” Bucky says, putting the coffee and a creased paper bag down, and shrugging off his leather jacket. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“I just woke up,” Steve says, eyeing the coffee and Bucky’s shoulders, stretching a black cotton t-shirt filched from his closet, with equal interest. “Where’d you go?”

“Got breakfast,” Bucky said. “Made it as quick as possible, didn’t want you to think that I’d left my best guy hanging.” He passes a cardboard cup of coffee over, and grimaces when Steve beams at him. “Don’t look at me like that,” he says, “It was nothin’.”

“What’s in the bag?” Steve asks, fiddling with the lid of his cup and taking a deep drink. “Please say it’s breakfast.”

“Bacon, egg, and cheese,” Bucky says, and grins when Steve groans outright and makes grasping motions for the bag. “Three each,” he says, pulling the foil-wrapped sandwiches from the bag and pitching one in Steve’s direction. “Cheddar cheese, extra bacon. Little salt and pepper. Some of that hot sauce you like.”

“Bucky,” Steve says seriously. “I could kiss you.”

“Well, why don’t you then?” Bucky asks, half-seriously, and when Steve surges across the living room to do just that he yelps, waving one half of his sandwich in the air. “Rogers, are you crazy! I got a mouthful of egg, get offa me!”

Laughing, Steve subsides, and takes his sandwiches to the couch, where he kicks his feet up on the cushions and settles in with his breakfast. Grumbling, Bucky takes his coffee and pops the lid off, inhaling the steam deeply, and kicking at Steve’s shins until he moves his feet and makes room on the couch. They fall quiet as they eat their breakfast sandwiches, wiping their fingers on the stack of thin napkins provided by the bodega, and sipping at their coffee in between bites.

“Man,” Steve says, when he’s crumpled the foil and wax paper from his third sandwich. “That was the best thing I’ve ever eaten. Is there more coffee?”

“I can make some,” Bucky says, lobbing his tightly folded sandwich wrappers at the trash can, and raising his arms in victory when they sink in.

“Oh god,” Steve says. “All that pour over shit again? What’s wrong with a cuppa bodega coffee?” 

“Nothin’ wrong with it,” Bucky says. “But I went outside once today already and it’s hot as balls. I’m not going back out again.”

“You could take off the leather jacket when you go outside,” Steve offers half-heartedly, leaning back and watching Bucky as he moves into the kitchen and takes down a bag of beans, his scale, his grinder, and his ceramic dripper.

“And end up in _The Post_ ‘cause of the arm?” Bucky asks, and Steve winces. “Yeah, no thanks, bud. You can go get us some coffee, or you can suck it up and drink what I make you.”

Groaning, Steve rolls to his feet, and goes to the window, peering out from behind the curtains to the world below.

They live on a quiet block in Bed-Stuy off Malcolm X Boulevard, near enough to Clint’s building to provide and receive back-up if needed, on the top floor of a pre-war brownstone with wide windows, intricate tin ceilings, and roof access. There had been some raised eyebrows when they first moved in, until had Steve convinced T’Challa to come to a block party the year before, his ship materializing out of the sweltering July air with a full escort of Dora Milaje. They’re greeted with friendly smiles now, and they take turns helping their neighbors carry groceries up the stairs. It’s not the Brooklyn they knew, far from it, but Bucky wouldn’t change it for anything.

He likes the spicy Jamaican curries they buy from the jerk shop down the block, the Yemeni couple who run the bodega on the corner and invite them to iftar at their local mosque. He likes the boys and girls who lounge on the stoops on their block, smoking and talking shit, blasting The Notorious B.I.G. and setting off fireworks in the middle of the street on Fourth of July.

He especially likes that the world invented air conditioning, and that they have two units in their apartment – one in the bedroom, and one in the living room. He likes the fire escape and the fact that they have roof access, for whenever the walls close in and his mind gets cold. He likes their apartment, crowded with Steve’s canvases and his books and cooking implements. And now, at the height of August in New York, when the sunshine is scorching and the air is still and oppressive, he really, _really_ like that they have air conditioning.

“Fine,” Steve says, letting the gauzy curtains fall closed. “I’ll drink your fancy ass coffee. I’m not goin’ out there. Makes me sweat just lookin’ at it.”

“You’ll drink my fancy coffee, and you’ll like it.” Bucky tells him, and then falters as he’s pouring beans into the hand grinder. “But if you want, Stevie, we can go to Coney Island, or The Met….”

Shaking his head, Steve steps around their kitchen island, and wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist and squeezes. “I don’t want to go anywhere except here today. And maybe the bedroom again.” He bites at Bucky’s shoulders and Bucky twists around to smirk at him.

“Keep dreaming, punk.” He tells Steve, and shoves him off. “Go put on some music. Somethin’ nice. The kind of thing for spending the whole damn day inside.”

Steve grins at him and unplugs his phone from where it’s charging and flops back into the couch, scrolling through Spotify with an intent look on his face. Bucky goes back to the coffee, and waits to hear what Steve picks.

After everything – Thanos, the end of the world, Thanos again, Tony Stark, and the start of a whole new world – Steve had thrown himself into the future with gumption. They both had, but Bucky had been in and out of the world for far longer than Steve had.

Steve had dipped back into his own past to say goodbye to Peggy Carter, once and for all, to thank her and praise her, and then he’d come back to the present day and handed his shield over to Sam and kissed Bucky square on the mouth.

“Been wanting to do that for years, Buck,” he’d said, while Bucky stared at him and felt like his heart was going to leap out of his chest. Sam had groaned loudly and turned away to give them some privacy when Bucky put shaking palms on Steve’s shoulders and kissed him back, just as hard.

They’d gotten their apartment in Brooklyn with Clint’s help, and Steve set about acquainting himself with the future, while Bucky occasionally answered Spiderman’s calls for a “scary-ass bodyguard,” and learned how to make pour over coffee, and mangú with the help of Señora Morales, a real saint of a lady.

He occasionally nudged Steve in a certain direction as he raced through years of pop culture, but Steve was stubborn as ever, and developed an idiosyncratic slate of favorite musicians, movies, and foods. He had a worrying fondness for Ed Sheeran but he _got_ it when Bucky sat him down and made him listen to Born to Run from start to finish. Bucky watched all the new Pixar movies with him, and they sat in near-reverent silence and watched the original Star Wars trilogy together every few months.

“What are you thinkin’ about Buck?” Steve asks, and, shaking himself, Bucky realizes that he’d been staring off into space, his metal fingers frozen on the handle of their kettle. 

“Thinking about your terrible taste in music,” Bucky says, easily, and rolls his eyes when Steve scoffs.

“I have great taste in music,” Steve says, and puts on Gary Clark Jr., because he’s been stealing Bucky’s Spotify login, and learning well. 

He plucks a sketchbook from their groaning bookshelf, stuffed with Bucky’s paperback classics and science fiction novels, and picks a pencil from a small jar on the coffee table and settles into the couch. Bucky watches him with a smile as he makes the coffee, pouring hot water over the grounds and timing the process carefully. He places a hand-crafted mug on the coffee table by Steve’s elbow, and pads into the bedroom to pick up his book from his bedside table, settling onto the other side of the couch with his coffee and his Agatha Christie novel, tangling their legs in the middle.

“Read to me, Buck?” Steve asks, his eyes on the lines he’s sketching on the pad of paper in his lap, and Bucky nods, juggling the book in one hand and his cup of coffee in the other. He reads slowly, each chapter interspersed with sips of coffee, and bickering about Steve’s increasingly wild guesses about whodunnit. (“Maybe he stabbed _himself_ , Buck. What? Come on, that could happen!” and “Have we considered that the train is sentient and inclined to murder? No?”) 

Their stomachs start grumbling around noon, because you can hang up the superhero costumes, but you can’t get rid of the super soldier serum and accompanying appetites.

“I got this, Buck,” Steve says, and disentangles himself from the couch, rolling his eyes when Bucky immediately lunges for his phone and puts on Lou Reed. He meanders into the kitchen, scratching at his belly, and tugs open the fridge to take a look inside. Bucky leans back against the arm of the couch and lets his eyes slip closed to the sounds of Steve humming tunelessly along to Lou Reed, and banging around in the kitchen heating up leftovers.

Bucky does most of their cooking, but Steve often fixes them lunch out of whatever leftovers they have kicking around, taking pride in making plates of food from the remnants of meals in plastic containers shoved to the back of their fridge. He’s drifting off to sleep when Steve nudges at his knee, and when he opens his eyes his boyfriend is staring down at him with a deeply fond look on his face.

“Lunch,” he says softly. “Come on, you’ll be grumpy if you don’t eat.”

Bucky makes a face at him and Steve sticks out a hand that Bucky grips and uses to lever himself off the couch. Steve’s hands are dry and warm, and he blushes bright pink when Bucky lowers his lashes and presses a kiss to his knuckles.

Lunch is leftovers, fried in a skillet with an egg on top. Chana masala and bright yellow scoops of aloo gobi, fluffy basmati rice and a buttery garlic naan torn in two. Bucky splits the yolk with his fork, and stretches his legs out long, bracketing Steve’s ankles with his own.

“It’s nice, isn’t it Buck?” Steve says at one point, one cheek distended with a huge bite of food. “A little apartment all our own in Brooklyn. Nice neighbors, good food.” 

“Air conditioning. Coffee,” Bucky adds, and Steve smiles at him.

“August in New York,” he says, “I got the city and I got air conditioning and I got you. Ain’t nothin’ else I’ll ever need.” He lets his legs fall outward, pressing against Bucky’s shins. “You ever think about how lucky we got?”

“Every god damn day,” Bucky says, “chew your food, Rogers, before you choke.”

Chuckling, Steve turns back to his food, and Bucky watches him clean his plate. “Never woulda thought you’d be happy sitting around at home all day,” he says, “especially in the summer.”

“You were right, it’s too damn hot to be outside,” Steve says easily. “There’s plenty to do in here. And the Cyclones aren’t playing tonight, so, you know. I got time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky grouses. “Can’t believe you’d turn your back on the Dodgers, Steve.”

“How can I support a team that’s all the way out in Los Angeles when we’re here in Brooklyn!” Steve says, and Bucky grins at the ire he manages to dig up each and every time they have this argument. “And the Yankees are shit, so the Brooklyn Cyclones it god damn is. And you can shut your fat mouth about it, Barnes.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Bucky says amiably, and gets up to do the dishes when Steve swears at him.

They get back on the couch after lunch, and Bucky stretches out for a proper nap, kicking his legs into Steve’s lap, and turning his face against the back of the couch.

He has a nightmare – a quick, disjointed one full of sharp edges and red blood and the look on Steve’s face right before Bucky turned to dust in front of him, and wakes to Steve’s firm hands on his shoulder. He throws a punch – he usually does when he’s woken up from a nightmare, and Steve catches it easily, curling his flesh fingers around Bucky’s metal ones.

“You’re okay Buck,” he says quietly. “You’re in Brooklyn. It’s August. The year’s 2020. We’ve done jack shit all day except eat and nap on the couch.”

“Speak for yourself,” Bucky mumbles. “I read you a book.”

“You did,” Steve says. “You good?”

“Good,” Bucky says, and Steve releases his fist and lets his fingers trail down Bucky’s wrist.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.” Steve nods, and squeezes his wrist once.

“You wanna see what I’m working on?” Without waiting for Bucky’s assent, he picks his sketchbook up from the floor where he must have dropped it when he woke Bucky up, and waits as Bucky maneuvers himself on the couch so that Steve’s firm chest is at his back. “I’ve got you,” he whispers into the nape of Bucky’s neck, and presses a chaste kiss at the curve of his jaw. He flips through the sketchbook while Bucky shivers his way through the last of the anxiety from his nightmare, solid as ever.

“Hey, wait,” Bucky says, and has to cough to clear the burr from his voice. “Is that a picture of me naked?”

“Uh.” Steve says, and they’re pressed close enough that Bucky can actually feel him going red. “That’s private.”

“It’s _my_ dick,” Bucky says, “lemme see.”

“Ugh, _Bucky_.” Steve groans and loosens his grip on the sketchbook, letting Bucky flip through until he finds the pages he’d glimpsed.

“Huh,” he says, “not bad. A little small, maybe.”

“Yeah, you fuckin’ wish, pal,” Steve mumbles from where he’s hiding his face in Bucky’s back.

“You wanna see the real deal so you can compare?” Bucky asks, twisting until he can grin at Steve, who raises an incredulous eyebrow at him.

“I woke you up from a nightmare all of three minutes ago,” he says, “and now you wanna fondue?”

“ _No one_ says fondue, Steve,” Bucky says, stretching languorously against him, and grinning triumphantly when Steve’s hands tighten automatically on his hips. “Take me to bed. Oh, hey, do you think you can carry me?” Steve just huffs at him, and takes his sweet time getting off the couch, putting his sketchbook back on the coffee table, and his pencils in their jars, straightening the cushions Bucky mussed with his nightmare. Finally, Bucky tugs his shirt over his head with one hand and flings it at Steve’s face. He saunters into their bedroom, and Steve follows him gratifyingly quickly, pushing him enthusiastically onto the bed and kissing him insistently when he laughs.

Afterwards, when they’re naked and sweaty and lying on top of the covers while the air conditioning unit wheezes in the window, Steve traces the contours of Bucky’s metal arm. Bucky lets him, and when his fingers still, he pats a hand over Steve’s hair – grown a little long and free of product – and kisses him deeply.

“You want a cup of coffee?” He asks softly, and when Steve smiles at him sweetly and nods he stands and pulls on a pair of boxer shorts that may or may not belong to him. He measures the coffee beans and grinds them, and while the kettle is heating he finds Steve’s phone down the back of the couch and puts on some Ella Fitzgerald, nudging open the door to the bedroom with his toe so Steve can hear it too.

He brings the mugs into bed, and positions himself against the pillows with Steve, shoulder to shoulder.

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve murmurs, and laughs when Bucky plants a smacking kiss on his cheek.

They laze in bed until evening, when the room gets dark enough that Steve flips on a light, and stands up to stretch.

“Pizza for dinner?” He asks, and then, “you think it’s cool enough to eat out on the fire escape?”

“Oh, for sure,” Bucky says. “Pepperoni?”

“For sure,” Steve parrots back at him with a bad Canadian accent, and flinches away when Bucky pinches him for cheek. Bucky fetches his phone from where he’d abandoned it in the kitchen some hours before, and scrolls through it while he lies in bed and Steve putters throughout the apartment, turning on lights and tidying things away.

There’s an email from Colonel Rhodes that he ignores, and two from Clint that he reads, the first inviting them to a cookout on the roof of his building over the weekend, and the second a meme that he pretends to understand. On Instagram, he’s been tagged in a blurry photo taken on his morning coffee run, and there’s a fierce debate raging in the comments of his latest post over whether or not it’s actually him running the account. He opens the New York Times app, reads the first two headlines, sighs, and closes out of it, before opening up Spotify to switch the Ella Fitzgerald to Billy Bragg, who always makes Steve smile fondly.

“Anything interesting?” Steve asks, leaning back into the bedroom while drying his hands on a dish rag. He nods at the phone in Bucky’s hands, and smiles when Bucky shrugs.

“Clint’s inviting us to a cookout on his roof this weekend. I said we’d go.”

“Oh, do you think Miles and his parents will be there?” Steve asks eagerly. “I should text them, do you think they’ll bring sancocho again?”

“I think if Captain America asks for sancocho, Señora Morales will bring him some goddamn sancocho.”

“I’m not Captain America anymore, Buck,” Steve says. “What should we bring, you think? They liked that brisket you made last time – should we get a cut of meat at the butchers?”

“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” Bucky says absently, scrolling through Seamless to find their favorite pizza place and making a face when Steve plants a tender kiss on his forehead. “Oh, and there was an email from Rhodes,” he says. “I didn’t open it, we can deal with it tomorrow.”

“ _Bucky,”_ Steve says, and Bucky punches him lightly in the shoulder when he reaches automatically for the phone.

“ _Steve_. If the world was in real fucking trouble, they’d text us. They’d send Morales and Barton to get us. If it’s not an emergency, it can wait until tomorrow. It’s dinnertime.”

Steve stares at him for a moment, and then sighs, his shoulders slumping. “Okay, okay. What are we having for dinner?”

“Pepperoni, pal. I told you.” 

Still chuckling, Steve lets Bucky hustle him out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, where they pull beers from the fridge, and place their pizza order. Bucky makes Steve call it in, because they usually get the pizzas thirty minutes faster when Captain America calls for them. Steve whines about it, but his appetite always wins out over his morals.

They crack open their beers and tug open the broad window that faces the street and leads out to the fire escape, where they’ve spent many late nights and early mornings, drinking coffee and beer and the occasional bottle of vodka after particularly bad nights, speaking softly or not at all, watching their Brooklyn – deeply changed, yet still beloved – stir awake, or subside into sleep.

The heat of the day has mostly receded when Bucky brings the pizza boxes up from the front door and stacks them on the fire escape, then ducks out to join Steve. The metal itself is still warm, holding on to the residual August sunshine, even as the night air cools around them. There’s some activity on the street below: people heading home or heading out, but it’s mostly quiet on their block, and Bucky leans his head against Steve’s firm shoulder and eats his pepperoni pizza in silence.

“What do you want to do tomorrow, Buck?” Steve asks, when they’ve eaten a pizza and a half each and he’s ducked back into the apartment for more beers and a box of popsicles unearthed from the back of their freezer.

Bucky sucks pensively on the bright blue popsicle he’s eating and looks out into the night. All the lights have come on across the borough, and he can’t see any stars, but he takes some comfort in knowing that they’re there, twinkling far above the city. 

“More of this sounds good,” he says, and his popsicle drips down his wrist as Steve turns his face gently towards his own to kiss him soundly.

“More of this,” he repeats. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

They stay out late, talking idly on the fire escape and watching their borough move slowly below them. When they go in to bed, it’s the next day already, and they move like sleepwalkers through the apartment, throwing away pizza boxes, brushing their teeth, and undressing for bed.

Steve runs hot - always has, even before the serum - and he cranks up the air conditioning before they get in bed. He wears boxers and a thin shirt to sleep, and Bucky loves him, so he puts on sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt and pushes in close when they’re in bed, falling asleep to the feel of Steve’s warm lips on his shoulders.

_\- fin -_


End file.
